Life Lion

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to ride with Life Lion, Penn State's critical care air transport group. I had never been on a copter before so it was pretty cool. When I first got there they showed me what to do and what not to do and then I helped them wash the beast before our shift started. Then the waiting game began. It turned out to be a fairly uneventful day of watching Fox News and CNN all day, but we were able to go out on one call to a nearby town. The page came in and we all jumped up to see if the pilot was going to accept the call and then we ran out to the helicopter and jumped in while the massive rotors started turning and the engines were howling. I got strapped in to this makeshift seat that they installed in the back, plugged my headset into the wall and we were off. The copter eased up gradually and very smoothly. After we were about 100 feet in the air, the copter nosed down and we smoothly sped away. It was really loud in the cockpit and we couldn't hear each other except through the headset. Everyone sounded like astronauts in the headset. I couldn't tell who was talking, so I would swing around and try to figure out who was talking as we were heading to the scene. I was surprised with how smooth the helicopter rode. There was a bit of a vibration from the rotors, but it was smooth. It almost felt like we were in the basket of a hot air balloon over the wooded hills of rural PA. The pilot and the ground crew were trying to find a good place to land. The pilot banked the copter around sharply like a boat turning to pick up a fallen skiier and we could see the firetrucks and police vehicles below. The pilot decided to land at a gas station. The helicopter dropped smoothly but in a controlled fashion toward the ground. As we got close to the ground the helicopter eased down. I was impressed with how smooth and effortless the touchdown was. Then chaos erupted. The door opened behind me and I unbuckled and unplugged at the command of the paramedic beside me and we jumped out the door below the wildly turning rotors. I made the paramedic a little nervous as I jumped out because I jumped out behind him to follow him, but it was toward the aft and he grabbed me nervously to make sure that I followed him toward the front of the aircraft avoiding the delicate pitot tubes extending out of the nosecone. We then went to the ambulance that pulled up with lights flashing. People were all around taking pictures with their cell phones of the copter and witnessing what was going on. We jumped into the side of the ambulance and there was a bare chested older man strapped to the litter. The flight nurse was asking questions about the victim while both the paramedic on the copter and the ambulance medic tried to shove big 16 guage IV catheters into his arms. The medic cursed out loud as he missed the vein. The guy writhed in pain as they stuck him and muttered that he definitely needed to go the ER now because of the pain from the large bore IV's. The medic handed me a syringe and something else in a plastic container and told me to put it together, but I sheepishly handed it back. We then jumped out of the ambulance and I watched as they transferred the big man from the ambulance litter to the helicopter litter and then back on to the ambulance litter to wheel him toward the helicopter as the rotors were still turning. I jumped in first on command and strapped in. They put the man on this table that swung out of the helicopter and the slid the litter the man was on from the copter on the table and pushed him in to the copter. The paramedic shut the door and ran around to get in along with the nurse. The medic crawled over me to get to the small seat facing me where the nurse was before. The door behind me was shut by the nurse and we gave the pilot the thumbs up to take off. Up we went. Effortlessly, we shot skyward and we were immediately hundreds of feet off the ground and heading toward the hospital. The paramedic grabbed a handful of colorful wires and hooked up the electrodes that were already on the man's chest. We then heard the pilot and the ground staff guide him to the pad and suggested directions to land from. We then came in toward the hospital and we played Chinese fire drill all over again pulling the patient out quickly and wheeled him into this big trauma room with lots of monitors and lights and people with lead vests on. I was in the way wherever I stood, so I just stood there as the doc was yelling out things that he was noticing as the flight nurse repeated back all that he was told by the medic on the ambulance. The nurse at the ER cut his pants off and they searched his body for anything that could be wrong and blasting him with X-rays. Nurses, doctors, residents, and techs were hovering like ants over a crumb. We left and that was it. Another paramedic from Life Lion gave us a ride to back to the hangar in an SUV. Like that I was back in the break room watching the news. Click on this to see pictures of the copter. Be sure scroll toward the middle of the really elongated page to see the picture that you click on to enlarge. The copter I was on was N600LL